Running away from things.
In deciding this evening whether or not to quit the job below, I consulted many other sources, other than myself of course, as is my way. It's easy to say to oneself, "Listen to yourself" or "Do what you know is right", but that can also prove impossible when your own recurring behavior seems even worse, more deceptive and contradictory than what you're trying to escape.
In the past two months, I have run from a lot things. Knud mentioned that I need to stop running from things, or I'll always run from everything unless I have a cleary defined goal. I bristled at this at first, because of course pinpointing an ultimate goal has never been easy for me. However, let's examine the things from which I have run:
1) Job at Harvard Book Store. Main reason? Eight bucks an hour for forty hours a week isn't enough to support myself on, so I would have had to get another job altogether, leaving no time for involvement in theatre or music, and even if I did have the time/energy, I couldn't commit to anything too serious because of my erratic work schedule. So we learned from this: I like feeling somewhat financially comfortable, and I need to be able to be involved in theatre and/or music as much as possible if I am going to have a non-career oriented job.
2) Church job at St. Andrews. Keep in mind, I may have lost this job anyway, but what caused me to even audition for this job if I was going to immediately have an avalanche of self-dount which caused me to call the woman and tell her I wasn't good enough? I don't know. Partly, I am good at assessing talent in myself and others, and I saw that I was below the level of my peers there, and didn't want to kill myself over it day in and day out. I was suddenly feeling an enormous pressure to sing right and sing loud, unlike any other experience with volunteer choirs, even when I was getting paid to be there. Plus, the music was boring. This taught me that I like to sing well and correctly, but I don't like to be having to prove myself with every note. Nor do I like the concept that someone can tell me whether or not I can do something I love to do.
3) New England Conservatory. I know, weird, right? I actually like to attribute my very application to grad schools to my total sleep deprivation and my choice to listen to Dr. Jantsch who, in retrospect, was a poor and uninformed mentor. Plus, after my BoCo audition I literally broke down and exclaimed to my father that I simply could not be part of a profession that was based on auditions like these. They're just not something at which I excel, kind of like math. Ick. Yet, I kept auditioning. Why? Because there was a chance to have a future for two years set in stone, right in front of me. After my midling other auditions and my rejection from BU, I became convinced that I wans't getting in anywhere and that that was for the best. I did a lot of crying over sacred music and talking o the phone with my mother who convinced me that some of the mess was her fault because she'd pushed me into doing something that she'd seen me be happy doing in the past, not realizing that grad school isn't quite the same thing. And then I went right back to where I was before Berkshire Choral Festival "changed my life" (zapped me into an alternate non-reality of singing vacationness for 5 weeks) -- wanting to direct opera and be a college professor.
I think if I wanted to be a voice professional, I'd be at NEC right now. And I'm really glad that I'm not. I don't want to be writing papers except for about a select few things, and I dont' want to playing any more seventh chords, ever. I hate theory. Just about as much as math. I can't handle the life of the traveling "I don't read music" diva, so the small choral ensemble life would be for me. Even though I love that music,. it's not where my strengths lie. So why push it?
4) This job:
OK, so I feel hoodwinked into the job I do now, which is basically filling in all the admin. gaps for a small theatre, while being alone all day in a cold dark theatre lobby which just plain sucks. It really does. And these things were not in the job description, nor were they things that a normal person would think to ask when applying to work at a theatre company. The two guys are nice but I don't know what they did until Heather, the girl who trained me, picked up the skills she eventually amassed and I am now expected to take over. They rely on me to do a lot of stuff that I am not qualified to do. Maybe it's stuff that some Asst. Box Office Managers do, but it's certainly nothing that Dale, Asst. Director of Audience Services did. She did accounting, but at least it was all box office related. I do event/rental reports and contracts and things like that, and I'm just not good at it and it's totally grueling and scary because I'm beyond the point of "no one explained this to me". I just can't do it by myself. I'm too dumb.
I took this job mostly because I was in a Theatre Admin. phase. This phase was born when I became frustrated with the lack of artistic stuff in my life and therefore wanted to basically limit in that if my ultimate ambition was arts administration, then I was on the right track working in any theatre office ,and didn't have to worry about stuff on the side. I quickly discovered, however, wtih the help of this job and some of my experiences over the summer, when I'm honest with myself, that theatre admin. is not really for me. I love the people that do it, but my common sense and finance skills are not where they should be or ever will be to really excel in the field.
I need to do something artistic and team-oriented, and I have become quite fixated on directing and dramaturgy and plan to fearlessly navigate both theatre and opera using these skills (and several masters degrees). And then I want to teach at a really good university.
Which brings me to basically the biggest realization I've had about my life in a while: No day job will feel satisfying unless it is truly a day job/supporting artistic work at night and on the weekends. Because I have no ultimate goal, all day jobs have seemed boring futile, because nothing was there to remind me what I was "living for" so to speak. Daniel, in his very charitable agreement to help me figure out my life, suggested that I scrap the internships and direct direct now now now now. He admitted that that was scary, but that I needed to do it. He's right. Is singing in an amateur choir fulfilling? Kind of. Not really. It's more "enjoyable". In his word, "Your art can't be something you put off, or that you need someone else's permission to do."
I need to be creating and thrown into something that doesn't pay the rent. I need to pay the rent to, but in order not to want to kill myself whilst I am doing it, it has to leave enough of my brain and heart open to other projects.
Hello, saner life and saner decisions.
In the past two months, I have run from a lot things. Knud mentioned that I need to stop running from things, or I'll always run from everything unless I have a cleary defined goal. I bristled at this at first, because of course pinpointing an ultimate goal has never been easy for me. However, let's examine the things from which I have run:
1) Job at Harvard Book Store. Main reason? Eight bucks an hour for forty hours a week isn't enough to support myself on, so I would have had to get another job altogether, leaving no time for involvement in theatre or music, and even if I did have the time/energy, I couldn't commit to anything too serious because of my erratic work schedule. So we learned from this: I like feeling somewhat financially comfortable, and I need to be able to be involved in theatre and/or music as much as possible if I am going to have a non-career oriented job.
2) Church job at St. Andrews. Keep in mind, I may have lost this job anyway, but what caused me to even audition for this job if I was going to immediately have an avalanche of self-dount which caused me to call the woman and tell her I wasn't good enough? I don't know. Partly, I am good at assessing talent in myself and others, and I saw that I was below the level of my peers there, and didn't want to kill myself over it day in and day out. I was suddenly feeling an enormous pressure to sing right and sing loud, unlike any other experience with volunteer choirs, even when I was getting paid to be there. Plus, the music was boring. This taught me that I like to sing well and correctly, but I don't like to be having to prove myself with every note. Nor do I like the concept that someone can tell me whether or not I can do something I love to do.
3) New England Conservatory. I know, weird, right? I actually like to attribute my very application to grad schools to my total sleep deprivation and my choice to listen to Dr. Jantsch who, in retrospect, was a poor and uninformed mentor. Plus, after my BoCo audition I literally broke down and exclaimed to my father that I simply could not be part of a profession that was based on auditions like these. They're just not something at which I excel, kind of like math. Ick. Yet, I kept auditioning. Why? Because there was a chance to have a future for two years set in stone, right in front of me. After my midling other auditions and my rejection from BU, I became convinced that I wans't getting in anywhere and that that was for the best. I did a lot of crying over sacred music and talking o the phone with my mother who convinced me that some of the mess was her fault because she'd pushed me into doing something that she'd seen me be happy doing in the past, not realizing that grad school isn't quite the same thing. And then I went right back to where I was before Berkshire Choral Festival "changed my life" (zapped me into an alternate non-reality of singing vacationness for 5 weeks) -- wanting to direct opera and be a college professor.
I think if I wanted to be a voice professional, I'd be at NEC right now. And I'm really glad that I'm not. I don't want to be writing papers except for about a select few things, and I dont' want to playing any more seventh chords, ever. I hate theory. Just about as much as math. I can't handle the life of the traveling "I don't read music" diva, so the small choral ensemble life would be for me. Even though I love that music,. it's not where my strengths lie. So why push it?
4) This job:
OK, so I feel hoodwinked into the job I do now, which is basically filling in all the admin. gaps for a small theatre, while being alone all day in a cold dark theatre lobby which just plain sucks. It really does. And these things were not in the job description, nor were they things that a normal person would think to ask when applying to work at a theatre company. The two guys are nice but I don't know what they did until Heather, the girl who trained me, picked up the skills she eventually amassed and I am now expected to take over. They rely on me to do a lot of stuff that I am not qualified to do. Maybe it's stuff that some Asst. Box Office Managers do, but it's certainly nothing that Dale, Asst. Director of Audience Services did. She did accounting, but at least it was all box office related. I do event/rental reports and contracts and things like that, and I'm just not good at it and it's totally grueling and scary because I'm beyond the point of "no one explained this to me". I just can't do it by myself. I'm too dumb.
I took this job mostly because I was in a Theatre Admin. phase. This phase was born when I became frustrated with the lack of artistic stuff in my life and therefore wanted to basically limit in that if my ultimate ambition was arts administration, then I was on the right track working in any theatre office ,and didn't have to worry about stuff on the side. I quickly discovered, however, wtih the help of this job and some of my experiences over the summer, when I'm honest with myself, that theatre admin. is not really for me. I love the people that do it, but my common sense and finance skills are not where they should be or ever will be to really excel in the field.
I need to do something artistic and team-oriented, and I have become quite fixated on directing and dramaturgy and plan to fearlessly navigate both theatre and opera using these skills (and several masters degrees). And then I want to teach at a really good university.
Which brings me to basically the biggest realization I've had about my life in a while: No day job will feel satisfying unless it is truly a day job/supporting artistic work at night and on the weekends. Because I have no ultimate goal, all day jobs have seemed boring futile, because nothing was there to remind me what I was "living for" so to speak. Daniel, in his very charitable agreement to help me figure out my life, suggested that I scrap the internships and direct direct now now now now. He admitted that that was scary, but that I needed to do it. He's right. Is singing in an amateur choir fulfilling? Kind of. Not really. It's more "enjoyable". In his word, "Your art can't be something you put off, or that you need someone else's permission to do."
I need to be creating and thrown into something that doesn't pay the rent. I need to pay the rent to, but in order not to want to kill myself whilst I am doing it, it has to leave enough of my brain and heart open to other projects.
Hello, saner life and saner decisions.